


Passenger Seat

by vands88



Category: Supernatural
Genre: And Apparently I'm A Maudlin Drunk, Angelic Grace, Character Study, Death Cab for Cutie, Episode: s09e09 Holy Terror, Fallen Castiel, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Human Castiel, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, I'm Sorry, Impala Fic, Loss of Grace, POV Castiel, POV First Person, Possibly Pre-Slash, Post-Episode: s09e09 Holy Terror, Season/Series 09, So Many Feels It's Like A Disney Movie, Winchester Feels, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS UP TO AND INCLUDING 9X09 "HOLY TERROR". Remember the Novaks? Yeah, I wanted to fix that. But I also wanted to fix the Grace thing. And then I had three glasses of red, listened to Transatlantism on repeat, and wrote this, so... Sorry 'bout that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passenger Seat

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to [doctorsexyvanhalen](http://doctorsexyvanhalen.tumblr.com) without whom this fic would probably not exist, and would certainly not be as coherent.

I realise now that I have underestimated human beings - not in their courage or instinct or ingenuity, because I had witnessed those countless times at the hands of the Winchesters - but in their ability to carry on; to keep going when all else fails. I am in awe, simply put, at how human beings keep on living.

There had been times when I was without my wings that I saw the days stretched out before me and could not fathom the vast depths of uncertainty that each minute held. When the Winchesters had deserted me and I lived on the street with no money or “credentials” to my imagined name, I had felt desolation to the magnitude that only mortals could feel. But it had not been so easily displaced as I had imagined all human emotions to be – fleeting and inconsequential – no, it had hung over me like a rain cloud, only one that lived in the hollow where my Grace used to reside, and that never receded but on a good day would only drizzle.

I had been abandoned.  Rejected by my family, as that was what I had allowed the Winchesters to become to me. My own ethereal brothers and sisters had long since ceased to hold any familial values, but it seemed that I could no longer trust the Winchesters either. I had strayed from shelter to shelter with other lost humans. And, pitifully, that was the first time I remembered that my vessel had had a family too. My vessel, Jimmy Novak, had died years previously; his physical body destroyed and scattered next to the opening of Lucifer’s cage, and I realised that I had never done so much as to inform his family that his soul was no longer on this Earth.

The guilt weighed upon me, accompanying the other trails of humanity, but whereas the hunger and tiredness could be abated, the guilt could not. I felt the absence of Jimmy more keenly than before; his kind-heartedness used to be enough for us both inside this body. His goodness radiated like that. But now my body was silent and entirely mine and I had not realised how lonely it was before I had lost my Grace and the Winchesters as well. I had a fake body and a fake name and without my Grace, I did not even know if I had a soul.

That was how I found myself outside the Novak’s door. The first flight with my new wings and it was to watch Jimmy’s wife and teenage daughter on a winter’s day. They were cuddled together under a blanket watching a drama on the television and the whole house emitted a blissful warmth that could not be attributed solely to the twinkling of string lights. I could only watch, because the longer I saw their happiness, the less I knew I belonged. Perhaps they had already said goodbye to Jimmy Novak in their own way, perhaps my ghost would only provide them with false hope. There was no use in being there, but still, I watched.

I watched until the snow soaked through my stolen jacket and then I flew to Dean Winchester.

Dean had some banal questions, and there was a demon in the way, but now we are driving through the dark American countryside in the Impala, and I listen appreciatively to the rhythmic engine that always sounds like home.

Sam Winchester sleeps across the back seat, tired from his recent trials, but Dean is still awake with adrenaline. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the music that I also hear; the song of the engine, a job well done, and the quiet night sky. Dean has long since explained why he had abandoned me, and I am well on the path to forgiving him, as I myself have fallen victim to Gadreel’s cunning ways. After all, that is what family does, isn’t it? They forgive.

I breathe in the recognisable combination of dirt, engine oil, and sweat that clings to the Impala and the twang of cooling fast food tucked between the seats. The familiar surroundings are a balm to the stolen Grace within me; it sits strangely, uncomfortably, as if acclimatising to its new angel, slowly reshaping to my will.

It is in this stillness, that I tell Dean Winchester about my visit to the Novaks.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, “You’re coming to me for advice?”

“Yes,” I say.

“For advice on _ethics_ ,” Dean says, as if it is prosperous.

“Yes,” I repeat.

Dean laughs but I do not see the humour in the situation. He turns to me with a smile. “I’m not the best role model, Cas. Thought we’d been through this already.”

“I’m not sure I agree. What I have seen you and your brother do, Dean…You are remarkable. It is only with my recent experiences that I realise just how strong you both are.”

Dean Winchester is perennially flustered by praise, and now his warm cheeks and sudden concentration of the deserted road are testament to how little people change over time.  He will almost certainly deflect my sincerity with a change of subject, a reflection, or a joke.

“Yeah well, what can I say? Life’s a bitch.”

I am happy to acknowledge that I now understand that colloquialism. “Indeed. But you carry on regardless.”

“So do you.”

“Not in the same way. Humans carry more than angels could imagine. You, most of all.”

Dean shakes his head, laughing. “Wow, Cas, your human stint has made you really sentimental. Is this why you were asking about your vessel?”

We have become sidetracked, I realise. I had been asking for advice about Jimmy’s family before our conversation about humanity. “What do you mean?”

“Well, since we visited the Novaks years ago, you haven’t mentioned them once. Figured you just didn’t want to talk about it. But now all of a sudden you’re interested? You gotta admit man, that’s suspicious timing. You gotta be careful with all that caring, we’re one song away from a Disney movie as it is.”

I consider this. In the car windshield, I can see my furrowed brow reflected and the glances that Dean spares me while driving. I always did love the night time.

“I had not realised before how long the pain of separation lasts. I had assumed they would be fine without Jimmy.”

My eyes sting with unshed tears. I am confused to their sudden appearance; apparently there is still a little humanity in me, enough to realise I had been revealing too much of my own grievances.

“And were they?”

“What?”

“The Novaks. When you watched them, did they look fine without him?”

I recall the mother and daughter laughing over shared jokes in front of the broadcasted drama. “Yes,” I whisper, “They looked fine.”

I look down at my grasped hands in my lap until my wet eyes obscure the view. I blink back the tears. I had been foolish to have thought anything otherwise. Families are fickle things; they can surely be reshaped like the foreign Grace that stirs beneath my skin. The Novaks didn’t need Jimmy, and the Winchesters didn’t need me.

“Then they’re good liars,” says Dean.

I am doused with the warmth of the Novak’s living room with his words; the inexplicable comfort that Dean lays on my shoulders radiates down through every aching cell, because the gravity with which he had spoken was the same that I had been harbouring myself; Dean would never admit that he missed me but he had told me much more than that through displaced metaphor and the reflection of green eyes in the windshield that bore into mine as if begging me to understand.

And I do.  

I watch him back.

_I missed you too. We’re family._

He looks away and I know that he has understood.

“I could tell them,” Dean suggests, “Give them peace without having to see you. No offense, but seeing the ghost of Jimmy Novak is probably not gonna help the situation. Gimme their address and we’ll swing by, put their minds at ease.”

“They won’t have forgotten him?”

“Not a chance.”

Dean smiles at me, and the crinkles around his eyes make it seem like the uncertainty of the days before us are not something to be afraid of at all. This is how they do it then, human beings, they keep on living for moments such as this one; the smell of greasy fries, the smile of an improbable man and his snoring brother, the feeling of home, in a vintage car that rumbles across a deserted mid-West road in the dead of night with an unknown destination.

There are not enough words to describe my gratitude, but I find two simple ones that Dean Winchester might listen to. “Thank you,” I say.

“Don’t mention it.”

And I won’t. It is the Winchester methodology, after all, and one ought to respect their family traditions.

Dean smiles. The Impala purrs. The stars shine. And my new Grace settles, reassured. 


End file.
